Shalom Tower Syndromewas alsoaFinalist in the "Fiction & Literature"category at

The National Best Books 2007 Awards.

It was also released in 2008 in Italian by Edizioni Fabio Croce

The novel is set in Israel.Alexis, who grew up in Rwanda-Burundi, is the son of an Italian Jew and a beautiful mulatto
woman. As a young adult, he now queriesthe complexity of his roots:
African-European and Judeo-Christian (his mother was raised a Catholic). The author guides the reader through a progression of exciting and complicated episodes involving Alexis. With his
American wife he will vacation in Israel, and that stay will be a turning point in his life. The past catches up with him, exploding with the images of one man's life kaleidoscope: the memories
of his African years, colliding with the more recent images of Milan, the smells, the colors and the primeval beauty of the black continent, mingling with those of Italy, as well as with the
violent feelings Israel stirs in him. In that dense and haunting atmosphere he will meet young Israelis, a Palestinian and a German professor, the nephew of a Nazi soldier who died during WWII.
Will Alexis finally reconcile himself with the conflicting parts of his identity? Will he feel more African or more European; more Catholic or more Jewish; or will his new environment help him
find peace within himself, in spite of the country’s current dangers? The ‘mystery’ will unravel in the last chapter of this largely autobiographical novel. ‘There is a type of novel whose aim,
as Jonathan Swift wrote of his intention behind Gulliver's Travels, is to “vex the world rather than divert it.” If it's a good and true novel then it will inevitably also serve both as a
vexatious testament and a diverting read. Such is Albert Russo's I-sraeli Syndrome.

I-sraeli Syndrome is very much a biography of the soul, and as much as that of any latter-day Harry Haller, and Russo
seems to have dredged in its pages the depths of his own being in order to have written it.’

David Alexander

.

Excerpt fromJames Baldwin's letter to the author, penned the year of his death: “I like your work very much indeed. It
has a very gentle surface and a savage under-tow. You're a dangerous man.”

See the author's own French version entitled LA TOUR SHALOM,
published by Editions Hors Commerce in 2005 . SHALOM TOWER SYNDROME was also published in Italian in 2008 by Libreria Edizioni Croce

INTRODUCTION

.ENGLISH

You are on the official website of the author, Albert RUSSO. The website was entirely refounded. The accent was put on the simplicity of use –
the beginners in computer science as the most experimented will be able to sail and go through different rubrics simply. Since the works of the author have been written originally in English and
in French, the website appears in both languages.

With laser-like precision Adam Donaldson Powell bores into Albert Russo’s psyche, while in parallel he analyzes the work of a lifetime. But more often than not, there is a process of
cross-fertilization, whether it is clearly identified or on the sidelines. He interviews his subject, not always in a linear fashion, scanning the latter’s important stages of life: there is
first Central, Eastern – the former Belgian Congo (now, DRCongo), Ruanda-Urundi (now, the two countries of Rwanda and Burundi) and Southern Africa – Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa,
where the author was raised, completing high school at the Interracial Athénée of Usumbura (now Bujumbura), studying with European, Congolese, Hutu, Tutsi, Asian and American classmates, both in
French and in English (he also went to an all-boys’ school in Salisbury, now called Harare). We then find him in the Big Apple at the age of seventeen, attending New York University, after which,
he pursues his studies in German at the Collegium Platinum in Heidelberg. The subject is asked very intimate questions about his private life, with which he is faced for the first time. And he
reveals facts he never thought could one day be thrust into the open. But still, he complies, candidly. Mr. Powell illustrates with excerpts of the author’s novels, poems and short stories, which
are all either clearly or subconsciously related to Albert Russo’s life, as well as photos, letters and book reviews from Albert Russo’s personal archives. Mentioned are his AFRICAN QUATUOR, the
collected poems in the CROWDED WORLD OF SOLITUDE, volume two, his collected stories and essays in the CROWDED WORLD OF SOLITUDE, volume one, and finally, his GOSH ZAPINETTE! series, of which
David Alexander writes: “… Be warned, Zapinette’s gems of insouciant wit tend to become infectious. This wise-child’s deceptively worldly innocence takes the entire gamut of human endeavor in its
compass. Hardly anyone or anything escapes unscathed. Michael Jackson,Vittorio de Sica, Freddy Mercury, Mao Zedong, Bill and Hill, the Pope, Fidel Castro, and even Jesus of Nazareth all come
under Zapinette’s delightfully zany fire as she “zaps” from topic to topic in an irrepressible flux. As the century of the double zeros is with us, we have seen the future and the future is sham.
As a healthy dose of counter-sham, Zapinette should be on every brain-functional person’s reading list.” After America, the subject moves to Northern Italy where he will reside nine years, then
to Brussels. He spends half of his life in Paris, France, before finally settling in Tel Aviv Israel. When asked what his roots are, he replies that he is a humanist born in Africa, with his
virtual roots being the languages which he speaks: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, vernacular Swahili, as well as those he can only read: Portuguese and Dutch. He will soon add Hebrew.
Those cherished languages are much more than forms of speech, they are his planet, from which he extracts much of the sap of his writing.

Get Under the Shirttails of Albert Russo. Pre-order details available soon!

Watch Novel EUR-AFRICAN EXILES /EXILS
AFRICAINS

both written originally by Albert Russo turned into movie by Wildsound feature film -producer Matthew Toffolo:

Watch novelADOPTED BY AN AMERICAN HOMOSEXUAL IN THE BELGIAN CONGO by Albert
Russo, a Wildsound feature film, English book by l'Aleph - Wisehouse
Publishing, French book: SANG MÊLÉbyGinkgo Éditeur, both originally written
by Russo,

For those of you who have little time to read, you won't have to spend more than ten minutes whenever you open the book, you can just cover 2 or 3 pages at a time, since this big book is
sprinkled with anecdotes that can be followed separately, so don't hesitate, it will relax you at night before you sleep and hopefully make you laugh, as it did for a few people who were very
stressed before an operation. They laughed so much that they forgot about the surgery they had to undergo the following morning.

Zapinette lives with her mother, a staunch ‘felinist’ who owns a beauty parlor in Paris, as well as with Firmin, the latter’s boyfriend. The girl however feels much closer to her ‘Unky Berky’, in
spite of the fact that he is “such a weirdo at times and can get on her bloomin nerves”. Through Firmin, ‘the vermin’, she learns that her beloved uncle is a ‘homey setchual’. They will travel to
many countries together and the trips promise to be quite bumpy, they are peppered with adventures of the quirkiest type.

THE LITERARY REVIEW by David Alexander:
“... Be warned, Zapinette’s gems of insouciant wit tend to become infectious. This wise-child’s deceptively worldly innocence takes the entire gamut of human endeavor in its compass. Hardly
anyone or anything escapes unscathed. Michael Jackson,Vittorio de Sica, Freddy Mercury, Mao Zedong, Bill and Hill, the Pope, Fidel Castro, and even Jesus of Nazareth all come under Zapinette’s
delightfully zany fire as she “zaps” from topic to topic in an irrepressible flux. As the 21st century has reached its second decade, we have seen the future and the future is sham. As a healthy
dose of counter-sham, Zapinette Video should be on every brain-functional person’s reading list.”

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY by Leslie Shenk:
“... This book is a great ramble, rather like a chapterless Montaigne popping from one subject to the next, drawing connections no one else would ever have thought of, but with Groucho Marx, say,
passing on hints over the writer’s shoulder as to how to go about it. We readers chuckle along and even burst out laughing as we advance through this hilarious book, but we gather, we too
willy-nilly, the serious messages underlying the frolicking bounce and jocular mode of the writing.”

This is the author's major work of literature in English, it is an unconventional, atypical memoir entitled CALL ME CHAMELEON (or CMC), and it encompasses seven decades
of living, writing and photographing,

on four continents. Pleaseread any post that might attract you on this link and kindly respond on the blog itself (not by
private email). With much appreciation

The corresponding e-book will be launched this Autumn.

TO FIND ALL THE BOOKS WRITTEN ORIGINALLY IN ENGLISH,PLEASE SWIPE
DOWNWARDS

includes Albert Russo's award-winning novels set in the former Belgian Congo and Rwanda-Urundi, with historical facts which will surprise the English-speaking
readers who are only aware of the often distorted reports they gather in today’s media, that do not differentiate between the cruel era of King Léopold II and the Belgian Congo, created in 1908,
after the international scandal.

Note of the Author: I’d like to stress the fact that these four novels take place in countries where I have lived for 17 years: Congo /
Zaïre, Rwanda and Burundi, three countries administered by Belgium, that have been in the news recently for their current and past tragedies: the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which about
a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus have been murdered withing the space of 100 days; Burundi, which has the same Hutu-Tutsi problem and where hundreds of thousands of people have been
slaughterred, and, finally, Congo / Zaïre (DRC), where 5 to 6 million people - some even mention 7 or 8 million - have died within the last 10 years in internecine feuds, especially in its
two eastern provinces of Kivu, as well as between the government’s armies and the rebels,

I should also specify that I have lived and gone to school with Congolese, Tutsis and Hutus for at least 6 years (up to my baccalaureate) and thus have a real
knowledge of their plight and that my mother was raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Apart from the Sorbonne, the Catholic University of Paris, and the University of Trier, Germany (where ‘Le Cap des Illusions’, my apartheid novel was studied
and discussed, and which was banned in South Africa during the apartheid regime), all my African novels are being currently studied at the University of Lubumbashi, (Katanga province, Congo /
Zaïre) by students of history and of literature, which makes me especially proud, inasmuch as my poems and other writings are constantly published in anthologies with my Congolese brothers and
sisters, the last one, bearing the title ‘Les Voix du Congo’, published by ‘Le Cri’, in Belgium.

Excerpts from reviews and comments on the four novels:

World Literature Today (USA): “In Léodine of the Belgian Congo, the reader will find, as in the three other novels, Princes and
Gods, Eur-African Exiles and Adopted by an American in the Belgian Congo, many poignant and delightful passages, especially in the journeys across the magnificent Kivu
province, which today, along with bordering Rwanda and Burundi, has been scarred by fratricidal wars. That Leodine, in the opening novel, happens to be an adolescent, as was Leopold in Adopted by
an American in the Belgian Congo, isn’t fortuitous, for it is at that vulnerable period of one’s life that one’s personality takes form. In Albert Russo’s Africa you will find humankind’s
infinite diversity and, amid such richness, a quest for the deep self.”

James Baldwin's words to the author, penned the year of his death: «I like your work very much indeed. It has a very gentle surface and a
savage under-tow. You're a dangerous man.»

Edmund White: «Albert Russo has recreated through a young African boy's joys and struggles many of the tensions of modern life, straight and
gay, black and white, third world and first ... all of these tensions underlie this story of a biracial child adopted by a benevolent American. Adopted by an American in the Belgian
Congo is a nonstop, gripping read!»

Vers L'Avenir, Belgium: ... To tell a story is an art. It is an art which Albert Russo possesses. And the reader's attention is sustained,
unflaggingly, throughout the novel's 258 pages. The author succeeds in being heeded like those Bantu storytellers who, deep inside the bush, recount tragic or fantastic tales inherited from the
old oral tradition.»

La Liberté / Dimanche, Switzerland: «...born and raised in Zaire, Albert Russo masterfully depicts a world which is so particular, with its
customs and mores, its atmosphere and its passions, a totally different way of life. What he has achieved here is almost a piece of ethnology.»

Jeune Afrique: «... Largely autobiographical, this work is written in the manner of an exorcism, it is engrossing and reveals a very real
talent.»

Mwanga (Congo / Zaire / DRC): «... a work of universal appeal ... the human message is the 'fetish' which vibrates in the author's
book.»

PRINCES AND GODS

a Greco-African thriller based on true facts, set in Rwanda-Urundi

Damiana, the enticing wife of Tobias Antoniades, a wealthy Greek merchant twenty years younger than him, has the reputation of being a hot ticket in town. Among Damiana’s lovers are the
Tutsi Mwami himself, a Belgian police officer and Dimitri Stavros, a cinema owner. Damiana has added to her list a young American, Oswald Radcliffe, who works as a paramedic at the
Evangelical mission. Oswald is a poet and an idealist. Dimitri is terribly jealous and wants Damiana to divorce her husband. To reach his aims he will gradually get involved in the local
politics and before he realizes it he will be chosen as the hitman in the assassination of the Tutsi Prince Ruego, slated to become the country’s first Prime Minister.

All facts are true and the narrator has lived through them, only the real names have been changed. It is mostly about the Hutu and the Tutsi and their feud (refer to the 1994
Tutsi genocide Rwanda).

A hilarious, irreverent romp through the life of a child of the new century! Set in Paris and Northern Italy [refers to the first 3 volumes], the work shows us the world through the eyes of
Zapinette, a little girl who is smart, quick-witted, accepting and dazzling. Russo's use of slang language and spelling is just plain fun! The book is done in the stream of consciousness of a child
and jumps from subject to subject providing a very detailed, if not explainable, roadmap through a child's thought process. A fun and enjoyable book. Give yourself and a friend a smile – buy and
share this work!

Photos, poems and the full NOVEL entitled AND THERE WAS DAVID-KANZA based on my parents' lives in Central, Eastern
and Southern Africa and Europe (Italy and Belgium), with eulogy received from family and friends around the world, from India to the United States, from Australia to Israel, from Norway to the
Pacific, and, of course, mainly from Africa, south of the Sahara, relating to my beloved mother Sarah Russo.

Photos, prose and poems relating to my beloved mother Sarah Russo during her long itinerary from her birth in 1920 on the island of Rhodes (Greece), through Southern and Central Africa,
Italy and Belgium, where she lived, as well as through her travels with my father around the world, and her last journey, on the 24th March 2013. She was a passionate reader, in English,
French, Italian and Spanish. A wonderful pianist, she loved poetry above all. But more than anything else, it was the purity of her soul we admired the most, with her compassion, her generosity
and her sense of humor, for she could be very funny. Thinking of her, we now laugh, cry and laugh again.